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Greetings readers. I know it has been awhile and my has the news continued to come at a dizzying pace. The man most likely to cause America’s long term destruction at the face of our enemies has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his geniality towards despots. Russians may have the opportunity to inspect OUR nuclear sites. It appears there are more Communist-lovers in the Obama administration, an administration that happens to not be the biggest fan of Glenn Beck and the RNC shills over at Fox News. And as always, Israel has been thrown under the bus by the western world. The more the world changes the more it seems it stays the same.

This evening I want to turn to a topic that has been largely thrown under the bus in light of our depression and the push for socialized healthcare. It is an issue that admittedly I have been mum on because of my own reservations about the sensitivity of the topic, and a lack of clarity in my views in trying to reconcile security with liberty. I will address these points later. But I digress.

The mainstream media has barely blinked (and what a surprise it is) as terroristattacks have been foiled, court cases involving potential honor killings on our homeland have transpired and investigations proving the infiltration at the highest levels of our government by Muslim groups intent on destroying our way of life have been carried out. While I have been well aware of these issues from the first time I picked up a Steve Emerson book, it seems that based upon an event I attended tonight, our future leaders remain blissfully, suicidally ignorant of the dangers that lie ahead.

Tonight I saw a man speak who has had a fatwa declared against him. A man who has been censored by western nations because they are too afraid of the frankness with which he speaks; frankness which threatens western nations because it alienates a people espousing a hateful ideology living partitioned in their midst. A man who has called for an awakening at a time when our collective slumber threatens to cause us to lose before we even fight. Tonight Geert Wilders spoke at my alma mater, that old bastion of tolerance Columbia University. To the crowd’s credit, this time there was no rushing of the stage.

Wilders’ main argument centered on the fact that the ideology of Islam is a hateful one, given the laws imposed on people dictated by the Koran, and the hateful, violent and strongly anti-Judeo Christian bent of the book. He explained how this ideology has led Muslims throughout Europe to seek the destruction of western civilization, and that given their population gains, soon they would be able to take over Europe through democratic means. This was no news to myself or anyone who has been following the developments over in Great Britain, where Sharia law is being implemented and the society has been split in two with the British legislature, frankly cowardly MIA. This was no news to anyone who has witnessed the barbarism in France where chaos broke out in the streets largely driven by Muslim immigrants. This was no news to anyone who remembers the murder of Theo Van Gogh or the outrage at the Mohammed cartoon.

But what was refreshing was the fact that Wilders spoke the truth, unafraid of the consequences. He said things that any student here would be afraid to say (a fear which is probably the first sign that a battle is being lost). On cultural relativism, Wilders boldly asserted that Judeo-Christian values were superior to those of Islam promulgated in the Koran. He cited our ability to speak freely, protection from government and granting of civil rights to all groups as being superior to the rights engendered in Muslim culture and law. He overtly referred to the Koran as an evil book, though he rightly separated the hatefulness of the surahs from condemnation of all Muslims themselves. He even posited that Jefferson had acquired the Koran used to swear in Congressman Ellison so he could understand his enemy when the US took on the Barbary pirates during the early 19th century. He condemned the US government for supporting a UN resolution to ban free speech when it comes to stereotypes deemed offensive. He noted that fundamentally, criticism of religion is in fact the most important measure of free speech, and that it is being thwarted throughout the western world.

He also did something that no European politician has done in my lifetime that I can recall, stating that Israel is the canary in the coal mine, the “beacon of light in a pitch black area” in the Middle East. He boldly asserted much to the chagrin of his haters in the audience that the homeland of the Palestinians was Jordan. He noted, invoking a point similar to that of George Gilder in his fascinating new book The Israel Test, that Israel is fighting the war that we are losing – the fight for freedom against Islam, and that it is our moral obligation to protect her as the first line of western defense. He cited a handful of pieces of legislation that should be implemented, including: a Constitutional amendment that each European nation’s identity is one of Judeo-Christianity, a loyalty oath for Muslims in Europe, suspension of Muslim immigration given the grave problems facing Europe’s already exploding Muslim population, and expulsion of all those who wish to carry out jihad or commit crime on European soil. Most importantly, he urged all Europeans to vote into office “fewer Chamberlains and more Churchills.”

Personally I got a vicarious thrill listening to a man who said certain things that I wish I could say but am afraid to for fear of reproach or worse a fatwa against me. I was proud that he gave a voice to those of us afraid to express our First Amendment rights in the supposed last, best hope of this Earth.

Yet at the same time, this event was a sobering one. As I intimated, many people scoffed at Wilders’ ideas, decrying him for his belief that Muslims want to take over Europe, and guffawing at his poignant criticism of the Koran. These people have no idea about the struggle we are facing. When our enemies are willing to blow themselves up for a cause, and we quell free speech so as to appease them, you know that we are losing this battle. Americans are no more awake today than they were on September 11th. They remain as complacent as ever because they either do not wish to believe that a large enough percentage of the Muslim population is out there ready, willing and potentially able to destroy us, or because they are simply blind to it.

Sitting in a room with supposedly informed, intelligent students, I was struck by their utter ignorance when it comes to people who wish to take away the liberties both social and political that they so cherish. I sat in astonishment as women criticized Wilder’s, a man who opposes the very ideology that subjugates women and leads them to be killed out of honor when they reject Islam. I have news for these people — if you do not wake up soon, one day this country is going to be lost. Laugh at and deride those who warn you, but it is we who are trying to defend your freedom to be ignorant, naive socialists. It is we who defend your freedom to try to shout down those who are upholding our Constitution.

As I mentioned, I wanted to address some general points that I have been grappling with on liberty and security in our country. I have always on this blog defended classical Liberal values. Generally speaking, I believe that any infringement on our rights no matter how small will lead to the eventual collapse of all of our rights and thus must be stopped. However, we cannot have liberty without security. Our Constitution lays out our liberties, but also seeks to ensure their protection. In Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, it is stated: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” When an enemy threatens the values of your Constitution, this enemy must be defeated. We are not serious about defeating this enemy.

Right now, our odious politically correct atmosphere has paralyzed our country. We are working to appease the enemy within. We are going about our daily lives blind to the reality that the threat is growing and that our enemies are putting a happy face on their movement by naming their fronts things like “CAIR.”

I would argue that if we were serious, our attitude might be more like this: If there are people in this country who wish to implement Sharia law, a law diametrically opposed to our Constitution and more important opposed to our natural rights granted to us by our Creator, than these people should be sent back to their homelands. If there are people who wish to carry out jihad on US soil and blow up our great centers of commerce and our Synagogues and Churches, then these people should not be given student visas, they should be deported. If there are people in this country who shun granting individual liberties to all, and special privileges to none then please exit stage left. If you don’t agree that our Constitution is the supreme law of the land, then go someplace where you can live under Sharia law, don’t attempt to impose it on us. Unfortunately today there are Mosques all around this country where undoubtedly anti-American views are being spewed. Reverend Wright probably looks like Kahane compared to some of the otherimams here. The people who attend these Mosques and support terrorism either directly or indirectly should not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of this country.

For those who are moderate Muslims, you must speak up and declare to the American people the nature of our enemy. To sit back in silence for fear of being outcast by the Muslim community is a small price to pay for the total loss of freedom for everyone in this land. I cannot stress enough the importance of the so-called moderate Muslims working to help awaken this nation to see the folly of and the danger inherent in the road that we are going down (if for no other reason than because all of us white, fear-mongering teabaggers have lost legitimacy as we are mere racists and bigots). To continue down this suicidal path where we live in fear of offending people who wish to undermine our way of life is a slap in the face of the forefathers who fought to make this a free nation. We must get serious or we will lose. In closing, let me hearken back to Reagan who said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” Friends, we must courageously take up this battle.

We are living through a time in which all common sense and logic has been sacrificed for blind hope and misplaced faith. According to the current gospel, peddled by the Messiah and even his anti-Christ enemies (the Republicans ironically), in a crisis in which millions are being thrown out of jobs, debts are being called in and people are being forced to cut back and save more, naturally we must see to it that these forces are prevented.

So we pump public funds into failed banking institutions that took risks imprudently and followed a business model in which short-term windfalls were rewarded over long-term viability and sustainability…all at the cost of the taxpayers and the financial companies that would have been able to find value and profitability in the assets that would have been liquidated had the banks been allowed to fail. We do the same with the auto industry, bailing out our failing companies, and specifically the UAW – the union that pushed the companies towards failure by demanding the massive salaries and benefits that bankrupted the companies in the first place. We reward debtors who purchased homes they could never afford by forcing lenders to rewrite mortgage contracts and allowing the government to purchase mortgage debt to keep interest rates low, with the government thumbing its nose at those who had responsibly paid off their mortgages. We relieve people who took on too much credit card debt by forcing lenders to lessen their fees (the fees necessary to compensate them for the risk involved in allowing people to finance their purchases through debt) by putting restrictions on “unfair” charges, inevitably causing those who were more responsible in paying off their debts to pay higher rates of interest.

When it comes to the protection of failing bureaucracies, it looks as if all of the states in the nation will be forced to bail out California (amongst others) when the federal government comes in and helps ameliorate their debts created by reckless spending. More importantly, the responsible states will not only be sacrificing their money, but their sovereignty to the federal government, due to the fiscal idiocy of the other states.

Even looking to something as fundamental as our progressive tax structure, whereby those who generate more income are penalized through higher levels of taxation (and forced to subsidize) those who earn less income, in every single case the people that are in the wrong are rewarded, while the people that are right or at least not responsible for these problems are penalized. Given the rate at which our national debt is expanding, the burden of these current problems unfortunately will be borne on the backs of future generations of Americans as well.

At length I have spoken in the past about how economically destructive these policies are, merely exacerbating problems instead of allowing markets and the individuals that make up the markets to adjust. I have explained that many of these problems were created by the government in the first place. I have also spoken to the fact that the holes that we are digging in attempting to stave off our problems, in the wasted future resources and diverted current resources being put towards government-planned projects, the massive amounts of money and debt creation by the federal government and also in our move overall towards a collectivist society.

But fundamentally, what I am seeing is that there is something far more insidious at play. What this crisis has illuminated to me is that because everything the government does has the force of law, it allows it to embody all of the worst traits of fallible man, writ large. More specifically, practically every single thing the government does and has done is about taking things from one group of people or more often all people and redistributing them to other people. Since the government can tax, it has the legal authority to rob you of your wealth and give it to someone else. Since the government can regulate, it has the power to help certain companies and harm the ones it doesn’t like. Since all can vote for government officials, government can allow 50% + 1 of the people to destroy the rights of all people; or allow 99% of people to subjugate the rights of the other 1%.

What I have come to realize is that unfortunately, our Founding Fathers did not think through deeply enough how far men were from angels, because the Founders were imperfect just like the people that they built the government for. They did not understand that while they tried to protect us from democracy, given the power to amend the Constitution, democracy could be implemented, with certain classes plundering other ones and bankrupting the nation in the process. Were the document to lay out in clear language any number of restrictions separating the public sphere from the private, this would simply lead to innovation amongst the people in subverting law and usurping power. Unfortunately, they didn’t understand the fatal flaw that they designed a framework in which the people got the government they deserved, not the government that was best. I do not mean to decry their efforts, but merely point out that as great as the Constitution they crafted was, it still could not ensure that people did not corrupt or disregard it.

As some have argued, were the populace to be more educated, our government would be better policed and regulated by the people it is supposed to help protect, and closer to the kind of paradigm that was intended by our forefathers. However, the government through public education gets to indoctrinate the citizens from day one. Even for those who are home-schooled or receive a private education, they still might be deluded into voting for bad candidates — just look at the New York Times crowd or the Ivy League (I know, I can’t believe I am emerging from it with a clear head either). And an educated populace might be even more adept at using the government to serve its interests as is.

I have always found that more influential than any of these institutions are the people that we grow up with and live with – our families, our friends and our mentors. And this is why I believe that our role as free-thinking individuals is so important, and that we must seize this moment in which the world is upside down, when good is treated as bad and moral is treated as immoral to seek to open the eyes of our fellow men. We need to educate by teaching in theory, demonstrating in practice and appealing in good sense and morality to the fact that this system whereby everyone plunders everyone else in the end leads to our demise; into a land devoid of all values, corrupted and whithered like so many empires that came before us.

We need to engage in debate, unafraid of saying what we feel in our hearts and in our minds is right. We need to sharpen our arguments against our challengers so that we can swiftly, calmly and rationally show them the errors of their ways and turn them into our friends, or at least respectful enemies. We need to explain that our actions affect more than just those around us, but also our future: our children, and our children’s children. We need to preach that as Reagan put it “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” We need to argue that principles and values do matter, and that the consequences of sidestepping them are fatal. We need to scream at the top of our lungs that all progress comes from individuals, not coercive powers that dictate to free men that they must build pyramids or dingy fuel-efficient cars.

As things get worse and worse, people will first most likely react angrily. They will be looking for heads to roll. But we must keep our heads. We must be there with the answers, because it is only when people have lost everything that they will be willing to listen to the voices they dismissed before. If socialism can come into fashion so quickly from the height of what people thought was capitalism, then why can’t Liberalism supplant socialism just as quickly?

Until that day however, we must continue to advocate our principles in the face of angry, irrational intolerant sophists. We must keep fighting the good fight even if it means being hated. Derision and ridicule should be met with satisfaction, because it will mean that our detractors can only react emotionally to our reasoned arguments.

There is no shame in being hated by a group that is wrong theoretically, practically and morally. We must continue along, emboldened in the face of tyranny. We must defeat the gravest of evils with the greatest of goods: freedom.